27 June 2006 2:19 PM

The "interview" of David Cameron by Jonathan Ross on the BBC last Friday was nothing of the kind. It was a ritual humiliation.

Mr Cameron must have known this before he took part, unless he is both far more stupid, and far more badly advised than I think is the case. The political content of the exchange was dim, dull and unrevealing.

Mr Ross didn't even use his supposed street credibility to press Mr Cameron on the unsolved mystery of his true attitude to drugs. Instead he tried to trap him into a public declaration of support for drug legalisation. Patience, Mr Ross, patience. The Useless Tories will come round to this before long. Just don't rush them. How could the encounter have been otherwise than half-witted and uninformative?

Mr Ross, despite having accepted an OBE from the poor Queen at Buckingham Palace, is so ignorant of public life that he asked Mr Cameron if Margaret Thatcher was now "Dame Thatcher".

The question itself reveals a lack of knowledge of so many things at once that it is astonishing. Some people have suggested to me that the self-consciously oafish and juvenile Mr Ross says stupid things like this to be provocative.

I don't think so. I just think he's slapdash and ill-informed. So I'm not sorry for David Cameron. He wanted to grease up to the young and fashionable, and he was warned in advance that the price would be some sort of humiliation.

He got it, and, fawningly, laughed indulgently when the blow fell. he knew that the only dignified and proper reaction - to get up and leave without a word - would only have pleased people like me, which he does not want to do.

Mr Ross, who by my guess would be as likely to vote Tory as to wear Harris Tweed in public, must have spent long happy hours devising the most elaborate and revolting ordeal for the Teenage Toff.

He must have got some sort of clearance for it too. If not, why wasn't it cut out of the transmission, as such stuff obviously ought to be? The BBC, which thought it was improper to show David Beckham throwing up, were quite happy to screen their favourite presenter's ( he is paid six million sterling a year) moronic and obscene question about self-abuse.

The monarchy has already been put through this sort of thing by politicians and advisors - rock concerts in the Palace Grounds, New Labour jargon in the Queen's Speech, leaks about Her Majesty's fictional enjoyment of soccer (this word, by the way, is entirely English in origin, as some recent know-all correspondents should have realised). And the Crown has been made to give medals and knighthoods to people such as Mr Ross. But the Queen had no choice. These things are visited on her by civil servants and ministers who can , ultimately, tell her what to do.

David Cameron had a choice. He decided to undergo ordeal by smut because he actively wants to submit to the new order. He will do anything to tell the Left that Politically Correct Britain will be safe in his hands. And he is very good at it.

The only thing that amazes me is that so many actual conservatives don't realise that this procedure is also a demonstration of contempt for them .

Like the defendant at some Stalinist or Maoist show-trial, he believes his only hope of survival is to be his party's most bitter accuser. He should read some history. After grovelling in their accusers' spittle, those who did so were invariably dragged off to the cellars anyway, and duly shot in the back of the neck.

"Mr Cameron's fate is slightly different. Much as many in the leftist elite would like Tories to 'disappear' entirely, they know they cannot achieve this. So instead they want Conservative politicians to accept that they have been wrong all these years, and to "get their minds right", or rather left.

Dave will be allowed to live for the moment, but only so long as he Loves Big Brother. The elite hope that he will eventually become so compromised by surrender that, even if he attains office, he will be incapable of doing even the most slightly conservative thing.

I also suspect that, once an election is actually in the offing, he will find the current honeymoon comes to an abrupt end. Talking up the Tories in mid-term is one thing. Doing so when it matters is another.